Computing giant IBM has revealed plans to pause hiring for jobs that could be replaced by artificial intelligence over the next five years.
CEO Arvind Krishna said that in the near future, up to 30% of non-customer-facing roles (aggregating figures for about 7,800 jobs) could be replaced by AI and automation.
These “back-office functions,” including human resources, total about 26,000 workers within the company, Krishna added.
From January to March, companies announced 270,416 job cuts. The tech sector accounted for more than a third of his first-quarter job cuts, laying off 102,391 people. This includes layoffs at Alphabet, the parent company of Amazon and Google. 396% more than the same. According to an April 4 report from outplacement support firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, last year’s period.
Alternative tasks include providing employment confirmation letters and moving employees between departments.
However, he explained that other HR functions, such as workforce composition and productivity ratings, won’t be replaced in 10 years.
IBM’s plan is one of the most radical workforce strategies announced in response to rapidly advancing automation technology.
Resumebuilder.com, a job advice platform, surveyed 1,000 business leaders who use or plan to use ChatGPT, a breakthrough in Microsoft AI.
It turns out that about half of their companies have implemented chatbots. And nearly half of this group said that ChatGPT has already converted their employees.
Resume Builder Chief Career Advisor Stacey Haller said in the report:
IBM currently employs 260,000 people and continues to hire software development and customer facing roles.
Earlier this year, the company announced job cuts that could reach 5,000.
Nevertheless, Krishna said IBM expanded its workforce to about 7,000 overall in the first quarter.
The CEO, who has held the position since 2020, focuses on software services such as hybrid cloud for the 100-year-old company. A hybrid cloud combines compute, storage, and services in public and private clouds to run applications. .
He has diverted his attention from managed infrastructure and assets and is considering selling the company’s weather units.
Amazon’s job cuts are among the company’s major job cut announcements in its technology division, with the company announcing on January 5 that it will cut more than 18,000 roles in a continuation of previously announced job cuts. Did.
On January 21, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, announced plans to cut about 6% of its global workforce, or about 12,000 jobs.
And in an April company-wide memo, Aphabet CFO Ruth Porat announced a series of penny pinch measures to cut costs.
Porat detailed how Google is cutting costs such as fitness classes for employees, office basics like staples and tape, and less frequent employee laptop changes.
Similarly, Mark Zuckerberg famously proclaimed that 2023 will be the “Year of Efficiency” for Facebook parent company Meta.
The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in early March raised concerns about job cuts within the tech sector.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) seized SVB’s assets on March 10. This was after depositors (mainly tech workers and start-ups) began withdrawing their deposits from banks following the shocking announcement of a loss of $1.8 billion.
With approximately $209 billion in assets, SVB is the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, after Washington Mutual’s failure in 2008. A crash could destroy the tech sector as many start-ups use SVB as their sole account and creditor.
After the Federal Reserve (Fed) sharply raised interest rates last year in a campaign to curb inflation, many companies are cutting costs in response to slowing economic growth.
“With interest rates continuing to rise and corporate costs constrained, large-scale job cuts are likely to continue,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger Gray & Christmas.
